Reducing Bandwidth Use
FrontierVille and Ravenwood Fair offer options to reduce the bandwidth used by their apps, such as allowing them flash cache storage on your computer (which I suggest you accept). However, I feel that the usage is still high enough to cause you to exceed your limits. Here's a short list of crap that helps you exceed your limits: *Having to reload the game(s) often, due to bugs/connection issues *Major shockwave elements related to version number are always downloaded *Friend info is loaded every time, including thumbs, game info, and info required to load their farms for visitation. Every neighbor visit will count agains your limits. *Not all games use flash cache storage and graphics for those games are downloaded every time. *Remember every pixel of every image takes 4x the amount of data as one letter in a text message. A simple 32x32 icon in full color mode takes the same as 4000 or more letters of text. *Sadly most games that use flash storage do not store popup menus and must load them every time. They are also image based. In addition to the games themselves, using facebook constantly requires bandwidth. Generally this usage is very small, even if you get requests every second. This usage is however multiplied many times over by using my scripts because they load the news feed over and over again. Each refresh loads the same images and info, or new images and new info. It can get pretty bad. To help cut down on the usage my scripts cause, you do actually have an option. While the thumb and image blocker built into my WM script does delete the image from fb feeds, its really too late to save bandwidth once its already downloaded. To stop its actual download I suggest installing [Plus, another add-on for Firefox. This add-on allows you to stop a request for something before its even made. It will cause specified graphics from being loaded, and in most cases this doesn't take from the game experience. We can block images inside fb games (although the download once method they offer now is preferred) and we can block user thumbs, and game related news feed images. If you want, you can actually use it to protect your computer against popups, hidden iframe memory hogs and apps, and to keep you from visiting on accident things like virus sites or porn. Its a neat app! Ive used it to block trees and buildings while visiting neighbors in FrV, or to speed up playing on my own farm by blocking avatar graphics, hide trees to find grass and thorns, or to hide buildings to chop hidden trees or find lost animals. Recently, another WM user and I collaborated on a set of blockers for TI to speed play massively. It does take from the TI experience though because almost EVERY graphic is blocked. Gameplay is however extremely fast, as are load times. FarmVille graphic blockers have been around for years! In addition to blocking content, I also suggest reducing your gaming time and see what your usage drops to. You can probably request a notice or have it added to your statement what your used bandwidth is each month. Its good to monitor crap like that. Once you know what causes most usage, you can begin to selectively play, or not play to conserve bw. Stay away from high pixel count streaming videos. Stick to 240p or less, or simply dont watch videos on your puter. Another option to reduce the massive quantity of requests my script makes if you run it all day, or while you are out, is to use the 24 hour checker. If you have not used it before, you will find that you generally miss a lot of bonuses as opposed to using the WM in constant mode. Of course its grabbing older posts, so its more likely they would be gone already. To get the most out of the 24 hour checker, I suggest running it only once or twice daily. I run mine when I get up in the morning. Select the options you really want, then enable the 24 hour checker. Either let it run until finished, or turn it off when you think you are out of bonuses to collect. If you only want to collect for a specific game, run the script in 24 hour mode on the game requests page, while its running, click on the game you wish to collect for, or use the dropdown provided by fb which includes all the games you play. It will use the "show older" link until it reaches posts of a certain age, then it will automatically switch back to your normal options, such as refresh and all that. Running this way also reduces the requests made a step further because its only collecting for that one game. Most news feeds get all games, then use FB filters to remove content, and my script then removes or hides more content based on your options selected. Running in 24 hour mode once or twice a day is going to get a ton less data per day and will save you a lot of bw. However, you will miss more bonuses. Another key to saving bw, is to pick gifts you want, but not to help your 1000+ friends requests. Turn off send all for each game you play. Your friends might notice if you go from savior to scrooge, but they will understand if you 'splain it to them. Category:Docs